Part 41

Battlestar Olympus
Conference Delta

+28:51:44

(Helo)

The latest updates came in, reporting resupply was essentially finished, stocks from both containerships depleted. The whole thing had gone so smoothly I felt a bit guilty that I had been little more than an observer. Oh sure, my input had been sought on which ships should get priority and who should be contacted on each, but that was the extent of it. The rest of my time was spent drinking their coffee, eating military rations I could get fat from, and resisting the urge to call Nemesis every ten minutes.

Avery-Hunter and Admiral Rice had shown considerable restraint in questioning me, even indirectly, about anything relating to the fleet. Kara had probably filled them in years back, so maybe this was understandable. Then again, maybe they were just being polite and biding their time. They certainly didn't seem shy conversing in their own language in my presence, resorting to some guttural version of Standard only when necessary.

I didn't wish to push things trying to question them myself. The Admiral hadn't directed me to try it anyway, and I had no idea where to start even with the basestar-sized opening Secretary Richards had left in the wake of his press conference aboard Galactica. I'm sure I wasn't alone in harboring a few doubts about his description of Earth or his promises there would be no demands upon us to integrate.

What I wouldn't have given to be able to talk to Kara for just an hour. I hadn’t wanted to push there either, especially not after I’d heard Apollo was aboard. But Lee needed his time with her first; I knew this and understood it, probably better than either he or the Admiral.

Then again it had been nearly nine ship hours since I’d spat coffee at the Commodore. Given there had been no medical alerts or the like sounded, one could assume Apollo and Starbuck hadn’t done each other any damage; well, any serious damage. Those two could write a book on leaving invisible scars on each other.

Rather than contemplate whether I would ever see my friend again, I turned my attention to the rest of the room. Even with operations winding down as it was, there didn't seem to be any slowing in the pace of the men and women around me. If anything, they appeared even more tense than when we’d started out. Admiral Rice was talking on the wall phone while Commodore Avery-Hunter was huddled in discussion with a couple ofcrewmen.

I was ready to take a break to the head when the Admiral settled the phone back onto its cradle, doing so with the utmost and absolute control of someone trying not to simply slam it down. He hadn’t struck me as a particularly violent or short-tempered man; anyone who had ridden herd on a scared and unpredictable Starbuck for two years would have had to cultivate patience out of sheer necessity. His apparent distress was even morestriking by the glare he threw in my direction before pulling the Commodore aside. The quiet, unknown words that passed between them were enough to have the younger man look equally shocked and dismayed.

The Commodore dismissed his subordinates and the two advanced on me. I didn't sense any real hostility from them, but it was clear from their mutual non-expressions they weren't happy. I wondered what Kara – and really, who else could be responsible? - had done or said this time to get everyone pissed at her.

I quickly stood up and came to attention, despite the relative informality involved here. “Sirs?” I asked preemptively.

“At ease, Major,” Admiral Rice nodded. I relaxed just a hair, not sitting back down until the two of them did. Another indecipherable look passed between them before the Admiral spoke again. “Major, you should be aware that Delegate Adama and Colonel Thrace have...resurfaced.”

“Are they...?”

“Fine, apparently. Both of them are...intact.”

I unconsciously blew out a relieved breath. “Good news.” Then another thought hit. “They aren't in Life Station are they?”

Rice frowned. “Life Sta...oh. Our term for it is 'Sick Bay'. And no, neither of them had to be admitted. At least not yet.”

“I'm sorry, Sir. I don't understand.”

“Makes three of us...” the Commodore muttered aloud, quickly silenced by his superior's pointed look. I noted it wasn't a glare, not really, and more like one of shared sympathy. Very odd.

“Major,” the Admiral growled, once again focusing my attention on him. “The Colonel just communicated a somewhat...odd request to us, via Secretary Richards.”

“Sir?”

“She's asking us to assign guest quarters to Delegate Adama and his children here aboard Olympus.” I blinked in surprise, which was passing at best. “You don't seem too shocked by this, Major.”

“Um,” I hummed. “I'm more surprised they waited so long...”

“Excuse us?” Avery-Hunter snickered.

“Uh.” I was thinking hard how to explain something as...complicated...as Apollo and Starbuck. No easy task given I had no idea how much or how little Kara had imparted to them during her time with them. “Uh, how much has Kara...has Colonel Thrace told you about...them?”

“Kara has, reportedly, tended to work Delegate Adama's name into conversation at the oddest moments,” Admiral Rice explained. “Mainly in the form of cursing him and his entire line. I take it that doesn't sound too far off the mark?”

“Uh, no. No, Sir.” I frowned. “You say 'reportedly', Sir?”

“According to her aide, Lieutenant Mahn. Neither the Commodore nor myselfhere have seen as much of her over the last year.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, Major. 'Ah' indeed.” The Admiral sighed. “A lot of said cursing tends to revolve around her daughter...”

He stopped at the sight of my expression, which must have perfectly mirrored the fact my heart and breathing stopped dead at the last two words. “You didn't know?” he asked, truly and honestly surprised, although I only barely heard it.

“Uh,” was the only vocalization I could manage.

My neck was locked as solid as Galactica's deck plates, so shaking or nodding my head was out of the question. My eyes drifted to the floor as my mind tried, and failed, repeatedly, to process those two words. The Terran officers politely did not comment on my obvious and absolute distress.

“Major? Major!” Avery-Hunter all but barked after a few more moments. My eyes snapped back to focus on them. “You really didn't know she was pregnant at the time of her...departure?”

“Not a clue, Sir.” I looked down at the table between us. “I...she'd been getting distant from everyone back then. I couldn't even get her interested in Triad at that point...”

I racked my memories for something, any possible clue I had missed back then. However, between Hera getting a mild case of asthma and the disasters that were our daily lives, I really hadn't seen much of her. Even our short meeting in the head, where I'd made my idiotic suggestion of her seeing that Oracle in Dogsville, hadn't made that big an impression. Then again, I had been working on just four hours sleep in the last forty, so she could have been talking with visions herself and I wouldn't have noticed.

My thoughts then turned to our first meeting with Secretary Richards aboard Olympus, Sharon’s brief mention of “abdominal scarring”. I had been so distracted by the photographic record of Kara’s arrival on Earth – funny how I hadn’t once questioned the authenticity of it – Zarek could have started a strip-dance routine and I wouldn’t have noticed.

A daughter? Kara had a daughter now. Well, that explained why the Old Man looked so damned shell shocked when he’d returned to the meeting, and why he had suddenly gone limp on the subject of Kara staying on Olympus.

Even so, it didn’t entirely explain, at least in my mind, why Kara wasn’t willing to so much as visit Galactica. If anything, the little Buck would likely have the ship wrapped around her little finger before they got her off the flight deck.

I couldn’t help but wonder how Hera would react to her new 'cousin'. I wondered what her name was. I wondered…

“Major?” Admiral Rice’s gentle voice shook me back to myself. Frak, how long had I been sitting there in a daze. “Major, we need to know.”

“Sir?”

“About Delegate Adama and Colonel Thrace.”

“Ah,” I started, and then stopped dead. “Its, um, difficult to summarize, Admiral. Those two have a history that’s…well, difficult to, um, define or describe…”

“Try.” For a moment, Rice sounded like the Old Man at his most tolerant.

“They’ve known each other, well, pretty much forever. They were in the Academy at the same time, although I heard Kara and her mother lived on Caprica for a while near Lee and his parents; I don’t know if they ever actually met back then. After they graduated, Kara stayed on as a flight instructor and Lee went to a Viper wing in space. You know Kara was engaged to marry Lee’s younger brother at one time, right?” Rice nodded, while Avery-Hunter stayed still. I pressed on. “Well, after he was killed in a training accident, they…they both came apart a little. I think they…saw…each other once after that. Neither of them would talk about it.

“After that, Kara was assigned to Galactica by Admiral Adama personally. As far as I know, she and Lee didn’t talk or see each other for two years, right up to the day of the attacks. Then they were friends again and wing-mates. Fought each other nearly as often as we were flying against the Cylons.”

“Lovers?” the Commodore asked bluntly, to which I could only shrug.

“I think they had an affair while they were married, to other people, that is.” I smirked. “Gods know they provided plenty of gossip the way they routinely laid into each other. I think there’s still a betting pool going around about them.”

“About what?” Rice asked.

“About how exactly many times they’d been what we call ‘riding the stick’.”

“Geez,” the two Terrans groaned, almost as one.

“Yeah, that’s the general sense of it.” I didn’t tell them that the pool in question had resulted in the two rook pilots who’d dreamt it up getting beaten, badly, by persons unknown when it became known. It hung around only out of a collective, perverse fascination with the subject. If the Old Man or Tigh knew about it, they weren’t talking.

Rice shook his head and quietly asked, “How did Adama take Thrace’s…disappearance, Major?”

“Her death, Sir,” I corrected tightly. “Her ship blew up in front of him, with her flying right into a storm system and talking to him just two seconds before it exploded.” I had to huff a couple times to calm down; damn, but just thinking about it still got to me. Somehow, I had gone nearly two days looking through a pile of evidence to the contrary without actually having to think about it.

“Sorry, Sirs. I…it was hard on everyone. And Lee, he just…just switched off, turned into someone different.” I sighed, not wanting to recount how many times I had reached out to him, the silence of a total stranger being my only answer. I had taken posting on Nemesis as much to put distance from Lee as to escape reminders of Kara.

“Is he a danger to her?”

Now there was the question of the moment, one I really had no idea how to answer. Lee had perfected dedication-to-duty-slash-self-neglect into a true art form. Even his adoption of the girls hadn’t seemed to make much of a dent in his preoccupation. Gods alone knew how he would handle a living, breathing Kara Thrace.

Kara Thrace with a daughter, I mentally amended, wincing at the prospects of what a miniature Starbuck would entail.

“I don’t know,” was my honest answer. “I don’t want to think so, but…” I sighed, memories of the last Dance they’d attended coming to mind.

And how Kara looked like she’d been sucker-punched when I ran into her during the Scar hunt then saw Apollo in the same bad shape a few minutes later.

And the stories of them coming to blows after Colonial Day, whatever caused that one.

And that afternoon during our second year when they'd stepped into the ring, after that too wild party the previous evening when Lee had shared a sloppy kiss with some redhead.

“It’s probably not a good idea to room them together,” I ventured at length.

The Commodore nodded. “Good thing we weren’t planning on it then.”

I could only shrug again and look into my long empty coffee mug, lost again as if I had never gotten off Caprica.

TBC…

De Author Seez: Tha...tha...that's it folks! Nothing more to see here.

Just kidding. No flames or hate mail please! But seriously there will be a dramatic downturn in updates for the time being. I'm afraid I'm a tad burnt out on this one and have a pile of other stories to work on. Expect some original and not-so-original work coming soon.

Again, no flames or hate mail if you please. Reviews would be nice however, if only to tell me this all sucks and I should get a real job. The Muse seems to respond better when its being insulted. Go figure.